Phoenix Physical Therapy is pleased to announce the return of Nancy Suarez, MS, PT, BCB-PMD, PRPC. Nancy and her husband Joe have been in Colorado for the past four years and have now returned to their beloved Vermont. While in Colorado, Nancy worked in an out-patient setting treating pelvic floor muscle dysfunction and orthopedics.

Nancy has an international board certification in pelvic floor muscle dysfunction biofeedback through the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance. She recently added the Pelvic Rehabilitation Practitioner Certification from Herman Wallace making her one of a small number of practitioners in North America holding these two prestigious certifications.

Her clinical specialties, while wide ranging, include but are not limited to pelvic pain, incontinence, prolapse, pre and post prostatectomy incontinence and pediatric elimination dysfunction. Nancy’s hobbies include training and showing her dogs, quilting, and gardening.

You can schedule an appointment with Nancy through the website email or by contacting the office at 802-863-6662.

It is officially autumn and as our beautiful state, Vermont, enjoys the annual dramatic change in leaf color and beautiful fall foliage, change has come to Phoenix Physical Therapy as well. We have expanded our clinic to include a new patient treatment room as well as a new staff room to provide for
our growing staff of pelvic floor muscle rehabilitation physical therapists.

A change in seasons is an excellent time to assess your current state of well being and evaluate what elements support your general health and what aspects of your life provide room for growth and change. As the season transitions to shorter, cooler days, we should feel encouraged to take the time to slow down and gather sustenance to provide our nourishment for the coming year.

It is important to remember that slowing down and taking the time to relax is an important part of our pelvic floor muscle health as well. Many of our patients who present with pelvic pain or incontinence also present with a hypertonic or “tight” pelvic floor muscle. It is not uncommon to hear a patient say, “I do Kegels 24/7 and I still leak!” But just like any muscle, the pelvic floor muscle needs to rest and move through its full range of motion to benefit from repetitions of pelvic floor muscle contractions. A “tight” muscle often responds to a “squeeze” by tightening even further, resulting in increased pelvic pain or, with incontinence, the inability for the muscle to do its job as “gatekeeper.”

How do you know if your pelvic floor muscle is “tight?” The easiest way is to determine if your pelvic floor muscle is functioning the way it should. Ask yourself a few questions. When you go to the toilet, is it difficult to initiate a stream of urine? Is the stream of urine interrupted? Do you have to train to empty your bladder? Do you think you have finished urinating and experience a dribble of urine after wiping? Do you have bowel movements that are thin and snake-like? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, the pelvic floor muscle may not be functioning as it should and it may be due to a hypertonic or “tight” muscle that is not able to release and contract properly to allow for you to urinate or have a bowel movement. Other symptoms of a “tight” muscle can be experiencing UTI-like symptoms with negative lab results, chronic vaginal discomfort and other signs of irritation caused by the pelvic floor muscle applying pressure around the vaginal, urethral and rectal areas.

So how do you relax your pelvic floor muscle? A simple, effective method is to take a deep breath into your belly, often referred to as a “balloon breath” – not only will this stimulate your whole system to revert to a state of “rest and digest,” it will also gently release your pelvic floor muscle from a tightened state. Lie down and make yourself comfortable. Put a pillow under your knees and make sure your head is supported in a comfortable way. Put both of your hands on your belly. Take a deep breath and feel it raise your belly slightly under your hands. Don’t force it or try to make your belly rise, just allow the breath to do it. Breathe in through your nose like you are smelling a rose and then breathe out through your mouth like you are blowing out a candle. Follow the breath visually to let your mind release thoughts and don’t worry about doing it “right.” As you continue to breathe, move your hands to the sides of your abdomen and ribs and feel the breath gently move out. Finally, as you breathe in, feel or envision that your pelvic floor muscle releases and gently moves away from the center of your body. Again, don’t force it – it’s a very subtle feeling. Continue with these deep belly breaths for about five minutes and find time in your day to continue with this practice of releasing your pelvic floor muscle once a day.

If learning to properly control this muscle is difficult for you or if you are unable to tell if you are using your muscle as it is intended, consider an evaluation at Phoenix PT. Our highly trained and skilled staff will offer you more information and exercise tips to help.

Taking care of yourself allows you to provide for all the people and activities you are committed to in your day-to-day. Enjoy the season and take the time to relax and regroup to ensure your well-being and the well-being of those around you.

Just this past week the American College of Physicians published a Clinical Guideline for Physicians in an effort to provide clinical recommendations on the nonsurgical management of urinary incontinence in women. This publication recommends that pelvic floor muscle re-education with bladder training is recommended as the first treatment option in women with stress incontinence, urge incontinence or a combination of both (mixed incontinence).

The staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy, PLC is thrilled to see such a recommendation in the professional literature! We have known for years that this treatment option, when performed correctly, will make a difference in the quality of a woman’s life. Our use of pelvic floor muscle retraining with biofeedback along with behavioral modifications empowers women to get their incontinence symptoms under control, allowing them restored self-confidence and resumption of the activities they previously enjoyed, without worry of leaking. Our tag line “no surgery, no drugs, just you” is implied in the new Clinical Guidelines just published.

Urinary incontinence is the involuntary loss of urine and can occur in approximately 25% of young women aged 14 to 21 years, 44-57% in women ages 40-60 and 75% in women over 75 years according to some of the research reported. Another 6% of nursing home admissions is attributed to incontinence, accounting for $3 billion in medical spending. These numbers can vary greatly as other research indicates that women often will not report these symptoms to their physicians for a variety of reasons. The degree of symptoms, when reported can vary from mild to debilitating and represent almost $20 billion spend on medical management of the symptoms.

Phoenix Physical Therapy is happy to answer any questions you may have regarding treatment. We are here to help! Incontinence is not a normal part of aging and is not something you need to live with. Call us, email us or stop by! We would be honored to be a part of your medical care. “No surgery, no drugs,just you”.

The staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy, PLC wishes you a Happy and Healthy New Year! If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to seek treatment for any forms of what is termed “pelvic floor dysfunction”, our team is ready to help you achieve a happier and more productive life in 2014.

As we close out 2013 we say a fond farewell to our therapist Brooke Love, PT, DPT, BCB-PMD. Brooke is moving forward in her life and career with a transition to Phoenix, AZ and we wish her well. She will be missed. Ushering in 2014, we welcome Megan Abentroth, PT, DPT to our staff. Megan comes to us with a diversity of clinical experience and a doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of Vermont. Through her experiences, she has developed a passion for pelvic floor therapy and is very excited to be a member of our talented team…welcome Megan!

In this New Year there are many changes occurring in health care and especially within Vermont. Vermont Health Connect is confusing to many Vermonters and you may not be sure of your coverage for physical therapy. Rest assured that our staff is here to help you navigate the new system and understand your physical therapy benefits. We do hope that payment is not a barrier to improving your quality of life. With the New Year comes change and Phoenix Physical Therapy hopes to be a positive part of that change and will work with you and your insurance coverage to make treatment possible for your “pelvic floor muscle dysfunction”.

Many patients ask us what biofeedback training is. Simply put, biofeedback is any physiological process that can be altered due to feedback, either visual or verbal. We use biofeedback every day in our normal routines: we receive biofeedback in the morning when we look in front of the mirror and comb our hair or put on our makeup. The visual picture allows us to make an immediate change to what we see, continuously altering the image in front of us to something we know through experience is the image we want. When you arrive at work, a co-worker remarks that she likes your outfit. This is verbal feedback. Perhaps you adjust your scarf in response to what she tells you.

At Phoenix Physical Therapy we use a form of biofeedback called surface EMG (electromyography) to visualize the function of the pelvic floor muscle which is the muscle responsible for and contributes to the syndromes and causes of incontinence, pelvic pain, elimination disorders, etc. The form of “biofeedback” that is used at Phoenix Physical Therapy involves small electrical signals that are picked up from the pelvic floor muscles which are otherwise hidden in our bodies but under our control. Without a way to visualize these muscles we cannot get a true picture of how these muscles are functioning. The specific functioning of the pelvic floor muscles is what creates a dysfunction and leads to the symptoms that bring you to our clinic. By changing the physiological process of the muscle (biofeedback) we are able to teach our patients lifelong skills to manage and eliminate their symptoms.

Our staff at Phoenix Physical Therapy hold international board certifications in biofeedback allowing us to take the computerized image of your muscle and using specific software, read the image in a way that allows us to teach you ways to change the function of this muscle. In turn, this change in the muscle helps to correct your symptoms and gives you an awareness of what to do to improve your symptoms. Our level of skill in this unique treatment allows us to set the standard for this type of treatment.

If you would like more information on this treatment approach feel free to contact our office.

We are proud of the work we do with patients with pelvic floor muscle dysfunction and have redesigned our website to make it easier for patients and providers to navigate the site and the concept of treatment. We also wanted healthcare providers to understand more fully the treatment strategies we use and the success we have with individual treatments.

Pelvic floor muscle dysfunction can be a difficult problem to diagnose and there are numerous “terms” that are used medically to describe this condition, including (but not limited to): urinary and fecal incontinence, dyspareunia, vaginissmus, vulvodynia, urinary retention, constipation, encopresis, levator ani syndrome, and coccydynia. If you don’t find your “diagnosis” on this site but feel treatment would be of benefit, contact us to discuss further or schedule an appointment for an evaluation.

Looking at our practice as a group of individual providers is helpful to potential patients. Who are we? How did we get involved in treating pelvic floor problems? Nancy Suarez, Brooke Love and I (Jane Kaufman) want you to see who we are and get an idea of what we are like. This concept helps with patient comfort long before the actual treatment is initiated.

Where do we work? By looking at the website you can clearly see we are not your typical “physical therapy practice”. We offer more patient treatment comforts and make a point of working one on one with each individual who is here for pelvic floor muscle dysfunction. We are more like a “spa” than an actual clinic.
Contact us with simple questions, we want to help you! Incontinence, urinary retention, constipation, encopresis, dyspareunia (and more) all affect every aspect of a patient’s life and can interfere with overall quality of life issues. We realize this is a private and potentially embarrassing problem that makes treatment for some hard to pursue. We aim to make you comfortable, give you empowerment to overcome these problems and educate you on the possible and potential outcomes of your individual treatment plan. Our ultimate goal is to help you to the extent we can.

Call us or email us if you haven’t found the information you are looking for or have other questions not answered on this site. We will talk to you in person and make every attempt to answer your questions.

Client Testimonials

“Jane is the ideal health care provider. She combines professional knowledge and expertise with a truly caring personality. I wish I had been referred sooner. She has made a dramatic difference in my well-being.”

What Physicians Say

“I would like to heartily endorse Phoenix Physical Therapy’s treatments for pelvic floor dysfunction. I have yet to have a patient feel that the treatment did not help, often achieving resolution of the problem. There were no embarrassing visits. Her help proved to be convenient and discreet.”